Street Fighter II

aka: SF 2, Street Fighter II: The World Warrior
Moby ID: 6239
Arcade Specs
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Conversion (official) Special Edition See Also

Description official descriptions

Street Fighter II is a fighting game. Players select from one of eight characters: Ryu, Ken, Blanka, E. Honda, Zangief, Chun Li, Guile and Dhalsim to do battle with. They must then use their combat strengths to defeat the other seven fighters followed by four boss characters: M. Bison, Vega, Sagat and Balrog. Each character represents a certain country and has his or her own reasons for wanting to win against the others.

Each character has his or her own selection of basic fighting techniques based on three styles of punches and three styles of kicks. The effect of each of these changes depends on the characters orientation (ducking, airborne or standing still). Street Fighter II has a "button combination" style of gameplay used to unleash powerful moves specific to each character. These include the ability to project fireballs, channel electricity or capture the opponent in a tight suplex.

Spellings

  • ストリートファイターⅡ - Japanese spelling
  • 스트리트 화이터 II - Korean spelling

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Screenshots

Promos

Credits (Arcade version)

33 People (29 developers, 4 thanks) · View all

Planner
Character Designer
Programmer
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 80% (based on 48 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.8 out of 5 (based on 195 ratings with 8 reviews)

At a time when people thought the S in SNES meant "slowdown", Capcom stepped to the plate.

The Good
How many of you were as enthralled as I was the first time EGM ran an early picture of Guile in Blanka's stage with an article about this "16 Meg monster" hitting the SNES in the future? Did you grab for an earlier issue and try to compare it to the arcade?

Reigning around half a decade over a span of 5 versions, Street Fighter II was the biggest thing to hit the arcades since Pac Man. With huge sprites, detailed animation, and the pseudo-3D effect of layered backgrounds coupled with warping floor sprites, a home version seemed like a pipe dream to many fans, including myself. Needless to say, the surprise screenshot and confirmation of a home conversion were enough to send an obsessed fan into shock.

Weighing in at a hefty 16 Megs (Excluding Neo-Geo, it was the biggest home game to date. Super Street Fighter II would double that a few years later.), Street Fighter II brought the phenomenon home.

The visuals took only a small hit, but you'd be hard pressed to notice. The characters are big, colorful, and well animated. The vast majority of animations made it in (we'll get to the omissions later). Almost every detail in the backgrounds were retained as well.

The sound is wonderful, though not everything is here (again, later). Everyone shouts their little saying for their special moves, though it seems that Capcom slipped a little something extra in. Unlike the arcade version, the speed and pitch at which they spout their signature lines (such as "Hadouken!" and "Sonic Boom!"), is different based on which strength of attack button is used. Use jab for a fireball, and "Hadouken" is said slower and deeper. Use fierce, and it's said at normal speed. Needless to say, a savvy player can learn to judge when they should jump in to attack and when they should block, leaving a little less room to be caught in the face with a surprise fast fireball. This home version of Street Fighter II is also the bassiest. When a fierce punch connects and the bass is cranked, you're going to know it. It really added to the experience.

The music turned out very well on the SNES. In some cases, I actually prefer the way it was arranged for the SNES. No complaints here.

The gameplay is where this game shines. I can't think of a single combo from the arcade that won't work here.

The Bad
So, missing animation frames. There's not too much to complain about. Ken and Ryu's jumping straight-up Short was altered (same type of kick as jumping straight-up Medium kick), but I can't remember any other moves that may have been changed due to space considerations. One of Zangief's win poses took a hit. Like I said, not much that you're going to notice, outside of a few moves and some altered ending sprites (corrected to match the arcade in later versions, like Turbo and Super).

In sounds, the glaring ommission is "You Win!" You see it on screen, but you don't hear it. We loved mimicing the announcer, so that was kind of a drag.

One odd thing about the gameplay, you could counter Guile's flash kick with Ken and Ryu's jumping short (flying knee). This is the only version I have ever seen this possible in. I got used to using it, which would backfire on me at the arcades.

The Bottom Line
I bought this at the same time as my SNES. The SNES was $99.95, Street Fighter II was $81. Sounds like alot, but this game was an investment. This wasn't something you played through and set aside. Street Fighter II went to my friends' houses, where we'd play all night and complain about our thumb hurting the next day. It turned a room full of kids hanging out into an arcade competition. Every few minutes, you'd hear "NEXT!" "NOOOOOOOOOO!" and "I got winner!" Street Fighter II wasn't a game. It was a pasttime.

SNES · by DarkBubble (342) · 2006

Arcade Classic which still pulls the punches!

The Good
I first played the game over ten years ago now but I still enjoy it just as much now. The whole challenge and concept of the game is great, so are all the characters, as are the graphics, and stage music, especially Ken's and Ryu's, very memorable tunes. Playing the game is a very enjoyable experience, to this day.Its my favourite fighting game and one of my favourite video games of all time

The Bad
The AI of the game would irritate me sometimes, when facing Ryu, at times, he would just persist in doing his fireball repeatly, making it hard to counter the move, and irritating and annoying at the same time.

The Bottom Line
The best there was, the best there is, the best there ever will be..

SNES · by Big C (56) · 2003

The legendary fighting game may be old, but never dated.

The Good
Street Fighter II made history. Released for the Arcades in 1991, it turned the heads of players all over the world. They would forget TMNT, Final Fight and any other hits of the past to concentrate the attention in the most sophisticated game ever. All other fighting games before this one (including the first version of Street Fighter) were either primary or action-like (such as Double Dragon or Final Fight).

The revolutionary Street Fighter II brought unique characters, detailed graphics, big sprites, elaborated moves, smooth animation and involving sound. Then somebody would inevitably do the question: is it possible to do a game conversion? To which console?

Well, the next year the game was released exclusively for Super NES. Would be enough to say that this sole release rocketed the console sales? Or that Super NES only became a real challenge for Sega Genesis (in terms of sales numbers) because of this game? Or that Sega would invest millions of dollars in game production just to make its 16-bit console attractive to the costumer after the development of Street Fighter for its rival?

I'm not exaggerating. Nobody would ever imagine such a good Arcade translation could be done. Street Fighter II for SNES was more than a faithful conversion: it was nearly the same as the Arcade.

Technically, the game was perfect. Excellent in every aspect. Grand. It was the first 16-bit game to consume 16 Megabits of memory (not considering the Neo Geo ones), what guaranteed its superb quality. No other SNES or Genesis game could dare to compete to this one.

The quality of the graphics had no precedent. The sprites were not only big, but beautifully designed and carefully animated. Even the clothes of the characters followed the move of the wind (for a 1992 game, it was almost a miracle). The backgrounds were rich and animated, and they moved following the characters.

The sound quality was also awesome. Every stage had its own music, which became more intense with the victory of one of the players. The sounds contributed to a realistic impression of the game, as it was common to hear the voices of the characters.

Outrageous graphics and sound, but what about gameplay? Well, that's the best part! No other game had ever made such use of Super NES 6-button gamepad. The Arcade Street Fighter II used 6 buttons (3 for punches and 3 for kicks, of different intensities) and so did the SNES version. The combination of buttons generated new and special moves. The control, although easy, was complex and brought an unprecedent variety of moves to a game. And there were 8 characters available, each behaving differently. They were all balanced: there was no character much better than the other, it would depend on the player's preferences.

What else? The game was not too difficult and not too easy. There were 10 levels of difficulty so the player could choose the most adequate.

The Bad
The game is perfect in almost every aspect and has no major problems. Just some minor ones.

First, Capcom could have included a cheat to allow players control the four bosses.Everyone wanted to control the bosses as Street Fighter II Champion Edition hit the Arcade. But there was no option or cheat for that.

The action could have been a bit faster. There is some slowdown. This is a problem with the Super NES slow processor and not with the game itself. But it irritates sometimes.

Also, the bonus stages were not the same. Capcom substituted the cool "barrel" bonus stage for the somewhat boring "bricks" bonus stage. It does not spoil the game, but the original bonus stage could have been kept.

It can also be said that the Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not very, uhu, intelligent. But so was the Arcade. Indeed, Street Fighter II had a good AI, but the gamers could sometimes predict the opponent's move. And that would make it easy to win the fights.

The Bottom Line
TRUE CLASSIC. If this game is not perfect, I don't know what could be.

SNES · by Mumm-Ra (393) · 2003

[ View all 8 player reviews ]

Trivia

C64 version

One interesting quirk about the Commodore 64 version of the game is that the special moves printed in the manual for each character were just plain wrong.

Modul size

Street Fighter II for Super NES was the first game for the console to feature 16 Megabits (2 Megabytes) of memory. At the time, the biggest games released for both Super NES and Sega Genesis had 12 Megabits.

Ryu and Ken

Something few people (at least nowadays) realize about Street Fighter II is why on the original release Ryu and Ken where carbon copies of each other. Sure, the tradition of having two very similar main antagonistic characters is present on pretty much all 1-on-1 fighting games since it works as a standard dramatic component, but the reason for said tradition's creation on SF2 was purely practical: the original arcade version of the game didn't come with different palettes, so there was no way to have two players controlling the same character without getting confused. Thus having Ryu and Ken available was the only real way in SF2 to have a fair and completely even fight.

Sheng Long

Remember the Sheng Long controversy? Whenever Ryu won a match he would say his trademark phrase just as anyone else, but his was a little more cryptic than the others: "You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance" Who the hell is Sheng Long?? That was what most western SF2 players though. The answer as usual was in a botched translation effort: Sheng Long is the chinese pronunciation of Sho-Ryu, as in Sho-Ryu-Ken, aka the Dragon Punch. Ryu was saying that you had to master his technique in order to beat him, but for some odd reason that we'll never know English, Chinese and Japanese got all mixed up in some poor translator's head and the "Sheng Long" was phonetically transcribed as it was, and coupled with Ryu's cryptic message gave the impression that he was talking about some hidden character.

The rumor flew around from day one (among other famous SF2 hoaxes like the one about you being able to ride Guile's Jet or beating up the bystanders in some stages), but it really spread like wildfire when as an April Fool's joke EGM published an article about how there really was a secret character named Sheng Long unlockable via ungodly gaming prowess (beating all characters in "perfect" matches). Regardless of how ridiculous the rumor was, every kid out there poured coin after coin in the SF2 machines and spent hours in front of the home versions in an effort to unlock said character.

References to the game

  • In the music video Juicy, by The Notorious BIG, he has a couple of homeboys play Street Fighter II for SNES on a big screen. Even in the song, after the chorus, he starts the third verse by saying: "Super Nintendo, SEGA Genesis, When I was dead broke, man I couldn't picture this!"
  • In the 1993 movie City Hunter starring Jackie Chan, there's a part where Jackie, who is playing private eye, fights villains on a shipboard. Accidentally he gets smashed into arcade machine... with Street Fighter II running on it. After electric shock he transforms into Honda, then Chun-Li, Guile, Dhalsim (stretching limbs included) and fights an enemy who transforms into Ken.

References

In Zangief's ending former Russian prime minister Mikhail Gorbachev does a cameo.

Sales

According to publisher Capcom, Street Fighter II has sold 6.3 million copies worldwide since its initial release (as of June 30, 2016).

Street Fighter II games

Street Fighter II is the first of no less than five Street Fighter II games:

  • Street Fighter II - the original that started it all.
  • Street Fighter II': Special Champion Edition - allowed you to play the boss characters Balrog, Sagat, Vega and Mr. Bison.
  • Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting - introduced new moves, faster game speed and different colors for the character costumes.
  • Super Street Fighter II - this one introduced characters Cammy, Fei Long, Dee Jay & T. Hawk and added even more moves.
  • Super Street Fighter II Turbo - final and most polished version, this one introduced secret character Akuma.

SFLIU

Since the (US Gold) DOS version release was rather late, some PC enthusiasts 'released' a home-made clone of the game in the meantime. Though not being an exact 1:1 copy, the project (referred to as SFLIU, more details on http://syste.ms/sfliu.html) features the basic fighters' moves and specials and even allows for the specific arcade sound effects (like Ryu screaming out "Hadoken!") to be played via PC speaker, a feature not implemented in the official US Gold release. Unfortunately, the SFLIU graphics and gameplay are poor compared to the real thing, but some hacks and patches that came later on provided some new innovating moves not found in the original Street Fighter game.

Awards

  • Commodore Format
    • July 1993 (Issue 34) - Modern Classics: Beat-'em-ups
    • November 1994 (Issue 50) – #19 The All-Time Top 50 C64 Games
    • November 1994 (Issue 50) – #9 The Bottom 10
  • EGM
    • July 1992 (Issue 36) - Game of the Month
    • 1993 Buyer's Guide - Best Game of the Year
    • 1993 Buyer's Guide - Best SNES Game of the Year
    • 1993 Buyer's Guide - Best Video Game Ending
    • 1993 Buyer's Guide - Hottest Video Game Babe (Chun Li)
    • November 1997 (Issue 100) - ranked #3 (Titles That Revolutionized Console Gaming) (Arcade version)
  • Game Informer
      August 2001 (Issue #100)
    • #22 in the "Top 100 Games of All Time" poll
  • GameSpy
    • 2001 – #30 Top Game of All Time
  • Power Play
    • Issue 02/1993 – #3 Best SNES Game in 1992
  • Retro Gamer
    • October 2004 (Issue #9) – #27 Best Game Of All Time (Readers' Vote)
  • The Strong National Museum of Play
    • 2017 – Introduced into the World Video Game Hall of Fame
Information also contributed by Apogee IV, JayBee, Mumm-Ra, PCGamer77, Robbb, Virgil, WildKard and Zovni

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Alexander Schaefer.

SNES added by Richard Firth. Wii added by Corn Popper. Commodore 64 added by Shoddyan. Wii U added by ResidentHazard. ZX Spectrum, Amiga, Atari ST added by Martin Smith. Arcade added by The cranky hermit. Browser added by glik.

Additional contributors: Roedie, Shoddyan, Mumm-Ra, Alaka, Freeman, samsam12, CalaisianMindthief, Patrick Bregger, Rik Hideto, Victor Vance, FatherJack, SoMuchChaotix.

Game added May 4, 2002. Last modified March 8, 2024.